OCZ StealthXStream 600W dissected

Index

Supplying power has always been a major point of a system and its quality and power directly affect stability, and endurance of internal components of a CPU. Everything has been said about never ending power hunger, the newest graphics cards require over 200W just for themselves.

If we add a motherboard, hard disks, CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blu Ray, etc. it is easy to see that we need at least 500W of proper electric power. Of course, we’re talking about high-end systems. Let’s say our system consists of only one graphics card, Geforce 8800 Ultra.

For one such system a quality 500W PSU will suffice, however quality is not easy to find. It is true that many manufacturers offer them but they’re often quite pricey. Endless search for a quality but cheap PSUs, good enough for a high-end system encouraged OCZ to make StealthXStream 600W PSU. Judging by what we’ve seen, it is a cheap version of popular gamer line GameXStream. The price being lower doesn’t mean less power and/or quality. It is still aimed at gamers and those who crave stability.

Those who know OCZ will immediately notice the similarities with well known GameXStream 600W. Similar, it is – same, we don’t think so. One of the down-sides of StealthXStream is a lack of SLI certificate.

Do not let that worry you, there will be enough power for all mid-range SLI systems, except for two GeForce 8800 cards, but we’ll talk about that later. Anyway, the lucky ones who can afford to buy two 8800s should have enough money to buy a more powerful OCZ PSU.

The visual difference between GameXStream and StealthXStream are the blue LEDs that are not featured in StealthXStream. Dimensions are standard ATX and you’ll have no trouble fitting them in any case, and RoHS sticker tells us that now health hazardous materials have been used in the production process.

Noise is a significant factor and the 120mm fan on the lower side of the PSU is a bit louder than GameXStreams fans. However, it is still quiet enough and StealthXStream is classified as a low-noise PSU.

The specs are identical to its more expensive colleagues GameXStream 600W and 700W. StealthXStram also has four separate power lines with 18A per each, and those can share up to 580W of power. Powering the graphics cards is done by two PCIe 2x3 pin power connectors which, as we have said before, will be sufficient for mid-range SLI or one Geforce 8800GTX/Ultra card.

Powering the motherboard is done by standard 1 x 20 +4 pin power ATX connector and 4 +4pin (8pin) CPU connector. Three S-ATA cables will be enough for a regular user as well as 6 large and one small molex connectors.

Cables are wrapped in protective netting all the way to the pins, which is typical for OCZ PSUs. This model comes with the active PFC, already a standard, and OCZ guarantees high efficiency of 80% for 115V (of typical workload) or 83% for 230V (of typical workload). We haven’t seen 80+ certificate but while testing we confirmed the 80% efficiency. The guarantee lasts for three years.